Noam Chomsky Quotes

Technology is basically neutral. It’s kind of like a hammer. The hammer doesn’t care whether you use it to build a house, or whether a torturer uses it to crush somebody’s skull.

Education is imposed ignorance.

If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there's a chance you may contribute to making a better world. That's your choice.

States are violent institutions. The government of any country, including ours, represents some sort of domestic power structure, and it's usually violent. States are violent to the extent that they're powerful, that's roughly accurate.

Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.

"Stability" means "we run it". There are countries that are very stable. Cuba is stable, but that’s not called stability.

There's a good reason why nobody studies history. It just teaches you too much.

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

"Tough love" is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.

Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place.

The Internet is an élite organization; most of the population of the world has never even made a phone call.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

A lot of the people who call themselves Left I would regard as proto-fascists.

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.